Hacilar

Hacilar

the remains of a Neolithic and Aeneolithic settlement in Turkey, 25 km west of the city of Burdur. Hacilar was excavated between 1957 and 1960 by a British expedition led by J. Mellart. The lower levels yielded the remains of a culture of hunters and gatherers in transition to the land-cultivation stage, similar to the prepottery Neolithic culture of Jericho (second half of the eighth and early seventh millennia B.C.); finds included the remains of pisé dwellings, barley grains, and stone vessels.

In the second half of the sixth and early fifth millennia B.C., Ha-cilar was a settlement of settled farmers and stock raisers. It consisted of small dwellings and was surrounded by a defensive wall. Among the finds were pieces of copper ore, a variety of pottery (some of it painted), and female clay figurines. Hacilar has much in common with the sites of early agricultural settlements in the southern Balkans.

The tempo of investigation increased through the 1950s, with MacNeish finding his archaeological Shangri-La in the Tehuacan Valley, Braidwood's team fanning out to excavate other sites in the now enticingly named 'hilly flanks' (of the Fertile Crescent), and other archaeologists turning their attention to such Neolithic sites as Jericho (Kenyon 1960), Hacilar and Catal Huyuk (Mellaart 1958; 1962).

Many Turkish kilims have risen from 10 to 100 times their previous value, over a time-span of less than five years, following a recent publication of James Mellaart, known excavator of Catal Huyuk and Hacilar in Turkey.

The absence of sickle-gloss(6) prohibits any more specific clarification of use, although one can assume that they played an important role as reaping implements -- perhaps in a manner akin to those blades found embedded in a bone sickle at Late Neolithic Hacilar (Mellaart 1970).

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